Interactions between working memory and language in young children with specific language impairment (SLI)

The underlying structure of working memory (WM) in young children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) was examined. The associations between the components of WM and the language abilities of young children with SLI were then analyzed. The Automated Working Memory Assessment and four linguistic tasks were administered to 58 children with SLI and 58 children without SLI, aged 4–5 years. The WM of the children was best represented by a model with four separate but interacting components of verbal storage, visuospatial storage, verbal central executive (CE), and visuospatial CE. The associations between the four components of WM did not differ significantly for the two groups of children. However, the individual components of WM showed varying associations with the language abilities of the children with SLI. The verbal CE component of WM was moderately to strongly associated with all the language abilities in children with SLI: receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, verbal comprehension, and syntactic development. These results show verbal CE to be involved in a wide range of linguistic skills; the limited ability of young children with SLI to simultaneously store and process verbal information may constrain their acquisition of linguistic skills. Attention should thus be paid to the language problems of children with SLI, but also to the WM impairments that can contribute to their language problems.     

Auditory lexical decisions in children with specific language impairment

This study examined spoken‐word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normally developing children matched separately for age and receptive language ability. Accuracy and reaction times on an auditory lexical decision task were compared. Children with SLI were less accurate than both control groups. Two subgroups of children with SLI, distinguished by performance accuracy only, were identified. One group performed within normal limits, while a second group was significantly less accurate. Children with SLI were not slower than the age‐matched controls or language‐matched controls. Further, the time taken to detect an auditory signal, make a decision, or initiate a verbal response did not account for the differences between the groups. The findings are interpreted as evidence for language‐appropriate processing skills acting upon imprecise or underspecified stored representations.     

Production of lexical categories in French children with SLI and in normally developing children matched for MLU

Free speech recording samples of two groups of French SLI children aged 48 and 62 months (matched for MLU, 1.70) and two groups of French normally developing children aged 26 and 36 month (matched for MLU, 3.2) were compared to determine whether they showed a difference in the use of lexical categories. A category-by-category comparison showed few significant differences. For low MLU children, SLI produced significantly fewer infinitives, past participles, copulas, and demonstrative pronouns. For high MLU children, the difference persisted only in past participles use. As for English SLI children, French SLI children were delayed in their acquisition of verbs. However, the differences in the syntactic structure of English and French ruled out a syntactic explanation of the deficit. Phonetic problems seem to decrease with age, so they cannot be the only explanation behind the difficulties of SLI children, which probably involve cognitive problems such as processing limitations.     

Do young children have adult syntactic competence?

Many developmental psycholinguists assume that young children have adult syntactic competence, this assumption being operationalized in the use of adult-like grammars to describe young children's language. This "continuity assumption" has never had strong empirical support, but recently a number of new findings have emerged - both from systematic analyses of children's spontaneous speech and from controlled experiments - that contradict it directly. In general, the key finding is that most of children's early linguistic competence is item based, and therefore their language development proceeds in a piecemeal fashion with virtually no evidence of any system-wide syntactic categories, schemas, or parameters. For a variety of reasons, these findings are not easily explained in terms of the development of children's skills of linguistic performance, pragmatics, or other "external" factors. The framework of an alternative, usage-based theory of child language acquisition - relying explicitly on new models from Cognitive-Functional Linguistics - is presented.     

The effects of presentation and content on syllogistic reasoning by children with and without specific language impairment

This study examines performance at a syllogistic reasoning task for a group of children (age 10 years) with specific language impairment (SLI) along with age- and language-matched controls. The syllogisms were presented either verbally or verbally/pictorially, and contained two types of item: imaginary versus real, both intended not to evoke strong beliefs. Children with SLI performed worse than age-matched controls, and equivalently to language-matched controls. Patterns of performance indicate this may be due to cognitive ability deficits rather than specific language deficits. For all groups, pictorial presentation interfered with reasoning processes. It is suggested that, for syllogisms, this pictorial information contextualises the interpretation of the task, and that in turn either raises working memory load or evokes belief bias. Additionally, these results suggest that caution should be exhibited before using visual aids to help children with SLI in the classroom.     

Language skills in developmentally disabled children

Language measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary, story telling, and immediate verbal memory, as well as two perceptual tests, were administered to a group of developmentally disabled children, and three groups of normal children, one matched for chronological age, one for mean length of utterance, and one for performance on one of the perceptual tests. When diagnostic subgroups of “autism,” “childhood schizophrenia,” and “other severe disturbance” were formed using standard diagnostic tools, no language differences were found between diagnostic subgroups. When compared with the normal control groups, many of the language skills of the entire group of disabled children, and of the autistic children alone, were rather evenly delayed, showing only a relative sparing of the naming function, and a relative deficit on immediate verbal memory. Furthermore, a high correlation was found in a small subsample between the difficulty levels of morphemes in the disabled children and those reported for young normal children. Experienced special-education and early-childhood teachers could not discriminate the stories of the disabled children from those of young normal children. Analysis of the disabled children's error strategies, however, revealed features of their language not found in normal children's language: (1) extreme perseveration in test answers and stories, (2) attention to minor features of test stimuli, and (3) failure to adopt alternate, flexible communicative strategies. We conclude that the language acquisition of the developmentally disabled children is delayed but not deviant in its semantic and syntactic competence, and that current diagnostic practice does not differentiate linguistically distinct subgroups. We further argue that where developmentally disabled children do exhibit aberrant features of language, such deviance parallels similar features in other cognitive skills, and is not unique to language.     

A Grammatical Specific Language Impairment in Children: An Autosomal Dominant Inheritance?

The aim of this study is to provide further characterization of a subgroup of so-called “Grammatical specific language-impaired (SLI)” children. The Grammatical SLI children have a persistent and disproportionate impairment in grammatical comprehension and expression of language. Previous research has indicated that their language impairment may be characterized by a domain-specific and modular language deficit. This study provides an initial investigation as to whether there is a genetic basis underlying their disorder as has been found for other forms of SLI and for SLI in general. The incidence of familial aggregation of language impairment was investigated in 12 Grammatical SLI children (aged 9:3 to 12:10). A familial language impairment (LI) history was classified as positive if one or more of the probands' relatives had a history of a speech/language or reading/writing problem which required speech therapy or any other form of remedial help. Case history information provided an initial indication that the Grammatical SLI children had a significantly higher incidence of a positive familial LI history than could be expected by chance. A questionnaire provided evidence of a positive LI history in the first-degree relatives of the SLI probands and 49 normally developing control probands. The SLI probands had a clearly and significantly higher incidence of a positive familial LI history than the control probands (77.8 vs. 28.5%, respectively). The results are consistent with a genetic basis underlying Grammatical SLI. The pattern of impairment in the SLI probands' relatives is consistent with an autosomal dominant genetic inheritance. In contrast to the control probands, the SLI probands' impaired relatives did not show a male gender bias. Thus, the gene does not appear to be sex-linked. The data indicate that further research is warranted to investigate the nature of the LI in the relatives of the Grammatical SLI probands and the genetic characteristics of this subgroup. The implications for the biological, domain-specific, and modular bases to language are discussed.     

The N400 component in parents of children with specific language impairment

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often have a family history of language disorder. In this study, ERPs in response to a visual semantic priming task were recorded in parents of children with SLI. Despite equal performance, the ERPs displayed differences in language processing: larger N400 amplitudes indicated that the parents, especially the fathers, were less primed by the preceding context. Difference waveforms showed that the fathers of SLI children, contrary to controls, had less differentiated responses to congruent versus incongruent sentences. We propose that the N400 observations may be residual markers of past language deficiencies in the fathers. No differences in the N400 effect were found in the mothers of SLI children.     

"Frog, where are you?" Narratives in children with specific language impairment, early focal brain injury, and Williams syndrome

In this cross-population study, we use narratives as a context to investigate language development in children from 4 to 12 years of age from three experimental groups: children with early unilateral focal brain damage (FL; N=52); children with specific language impairment (SLI; N=44); children with Williams syndrome (WMS; N=36), and typically developing controls. We compare the developmental trajectories of these groups in the following domains: morphological errors, use of complex syntax, complexity of narrative structure, and types and frequency of evaluative devices. For the children with early unilateral brain damage, there is initial delay. However, by age 10, they are generally within the normal range of performance for all narrative measures. Interestingly, there are few, if any, side specific differences. Children with SLI, who have no frank neurological damage and show no cognitive impairment demonstrate significantly more delay on all morphosyntactic measures than the FL group. Quantitatively, on morphosyntactic measures, the SLI group clusters with those children with WMS who are moderately retarded. Together these data help us to understand the extent and nature of brain plasticity for language development and those aspects of language and discourse that are dissociable.     

Imitation of body postures and hand movements in children with specific language impairment

Within the domain-general theory of language impairment, this study examined body posture and hand movement imitation in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and in their age-matched peers. Participants included 40 children with SLI (5 years 3 months to 6 years 10 months of age) and 40 children with typical language development (5 years 3 months to 6 years 7 months of age). Five tests were used to examine imitation and its underlying cognitive and motor skills such as kinesthesia, working memory, and gross motor coordination. It was hypothesized that children with SLI show a weakness in imitation of body postures and that this deficit is not equally influenced by the underlying cognitive and motor skills. There was a group effect in each cognitive and motor task, but only gross motor coordination proved to be a strong predictor of imitation in children with SLI. In contrast, hand movement imitation was strongly predicted by performance in the Kinesthesia task in typically developing children. Thus, the findings show not only that children with SLI performed more poorly on the imitation tasks than their typically developing peers but also that the groups’ performances showed qualitative differences. The results of the current study provide additional support to the view that the weaknesses in children with SLI are not limited to the verbal domain.     

Aspects of grammatical development in young French children with SLI

This paper presents an exploratory study of the spontaneous production of 11 French children clinically diagnosed as specific language impaired (SLI). In a cross‐sectional study of the children under and over 5 years of age, we investigate the production of finite and non‐finite verbal forms, of sentences with overt and null subjects, and of pronominal clitics. A comparison between younger and older children with SLI highlights developmental patterns which parallel normal syntactic development in important respects, though at a slower pace. An area of difficulty which clearly persists for the older group involves the domain of pronominal complement clitics.     

The italian determiner system in normal acquisition, specific language impairment, and childhood aphasia

The paper presents a comparison of the development of the Italian determiner system in three different populations: normally developing children, a child recovering from childhood aphasia from the age of 3 years, 9 months, and 11 specific language impairment (SLI) children. Data from Italian normal children provide evidence for the hypothesis (1) that no prefunctional stage exists as far as the determiner system is concerned and (2) that the syntactic properties of determiners play an essential triggering role early on. The analysis of the determiner system in the aphasic child has a double interest. On the one hand, it may help to shed light on some of the intriguing questions concerning this type of disorder; on the other, it may be relevant for the discussion of the notion of agrammatism. Results of the morphosyntactic analysis reveal that, apart from timing differences, recovery from childhood aphasia shares important features with normal development. Differently from mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched normal controls and the aphasic child, SLI children omit determiners significantly more often than almost any other functional category or free morpheme. We will argue that the reasons for the SLI children's atypical behavior have to be sought in the nonaccessibility to or in the misappreciation of one fundamental syntactic property of determiners: their role as elements that assign argumenthood to nominal expressions (Szabolcsi, 1987; Longobardi, 1994).     

Word Detection in Sung and Spoken Sentences in Children With Typical Language Development or With Specific Language Impairment

Background: Previous studies have reported that children score better in language tasks using sung rather than spoken stimuli. We examined word detection ease in sung and spoken sentences that were equated for phoneme duration and pitch variations in children aged 7 to 12 years with typical language development (TLD) as well as in children with specific language impairment (SLI ), and hypothesized that the facilitation effect would vary with language abilities. Method: In Experiment 1, 69 children with TLD (7–10 years old) detected words in sentences that were spoken, sung on pitches extracted from speech, and sung on original scores. In Experiment 2, we added a natural speech rate condition and tested 68 children with TLD (7–12 years old). In Experiment 3, 16 children with SLI and 16 age-matched children with TLD were tested in all four conditions. Results: In both TLD groups, older children scored better than the younger ones. The matched TLD group scored higher than the SLI group who scored at the level of the younger children with TLD . None of the experiments showed a facilitation effect of sung over spoken stimuli. Conclusions: Word detection abilities improved with age in both TLD and SLI groups. Our findings are compatible with the hypothesis of delayed language abilities in children with SLI , and are discussed in light of the role of durational prosodic cues in words detection.     

A comparison of semantic and syntactic event related potentials generated by children and adults

The present study employs event related potentials (ERPs) to verify the utility of using electrophysiological measures to study developmental questions within the field of language comprehension. Established ERP components (N400 and P600) that reflect semantic and syntactic processing were examined. Fifteen adults and 14 children (ages 8-13) processed spoken stimuli containing either semantic or syntactic anomalies. Adult participants showed a significant N400 in response to semantic anomalies and P600 components in response to syntactic anomalies. Children also show evidence of both ERP components. The children's N400 component differed from the adults' in scalp location, latency, and component amplitude. The children's P600 was remarkably similar to the P600 shown by adults in scalp location, component amplitude, and component latency. Theoretical implication for theories of language comprehension in adults and children will be discussed.     

L'accord grammatical de genre dans la dysphasie de développement

Various studies report that children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have important difficulties in using grammatical morphemes expressing gender, number or tense but none of these studies let us determine whether agreement perception is impaired. To answer this question, 18 children with SLI and 18 control children without language impairment participated in two tasks testing production and perception of French gender agreement between determiner and noun. The results showed that (i) only children with SLI produced gender errors or determiner omissions whereas (ii) both groups were sensitive to agreement violations: they were slower and made more errors to categorize disagreeing determiner phrases (*the_[masc] banana_[fem]).     

Are children with Specific Language Impairment competent with the pragmatics and logic of quantification?

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is understood to be a disorder that predominantly affects phonology, morphosyntax and/or lexical semantics. There is little conclusive evidence on whether children with SLI are challenged with regard to Gricean pragmatic maxims and on whether children with SLI are competent with the logical meaning of quantifying expressions. We use the comprehension of statements quantified with ‘all’, ‘none’, ‘some’, ‘some…not’, ‘most’ and ‘not all’ as a paradigm to study whether Spanish-speaking children with SLI are competent with the pragmatic maxim of informativeness, as well as with the logical meaning of these expressions.Children with SLI performed more poorly than a group of age-matched typically-developing peers, and both groups performed more poorly with pragmatics than with logical meaning. Moreover, children with SLI were disproportionately challenged by pragmatic meaning compared to their age-matched peers. However, the performance of children with SLI was comparable to that of a group of younger language-matched typically-developing children. The findings document that children with SLI do face difficulties with employing the maxim of informativeness, as well as with understanding the logical meaning of quantifiers, but also that these difficulties are in keeping with their overall language difficulties rather than exceeding them. The implications of these findings for SLI, linguistic theory, and clinical practice are discussed.     

Early syntactic productivity: evidence from dative shift

The abstractness of children's early syntactic representations has been questioned in the recent acquisition literature. While some research has suggested that children's knowledge of basic constructions such as the transitive is robust and abstract at a very young age, other work has proposed that young children only have constructions that are specific to individual lexical items. The present paper seeks to resolve this discrepancy by examining children's abstract knowledge of the English dative alternation via a production study. The studies ask whether young children who hear a sentence like I pilked the cup to Petey know that the same meaning can be expressed with the sentence I pilked Petey the cup. This generalization is well-attested in the language that children hear and represents a strong test-case for determining the nature of children's early syntactic representations. The results indicate that three-year-old children have productive knowledge of the English dative alternation, but that their performance can be influenced by small changes in the nature of the task. A preference for the prepositional dative form is also found and the possible reasons for this preference are discussed.     

Screening for Specific Language Impairment in Preschool Children: Evaluating a Screening Procedure Including the Token Test

Specific language impairment (SLI) comprises impairments in receptive and/or expressive language. Aim of this study was to evaluate a screening for SLI. 61 children with SLI (SLI-children, age-range 4–6 years) and 61 matched typically developing controls were tested for receptive language ability (Token Test—TT) and for intelligence (Wechsler Preschool-and-Primary-Scale-of-Intelligence—WPPSI). Group differences were analyzed using t tests, as well as direct and stepwise discriminant analyses. The predictive value of the WPPSI with respect to TT performance was analyzed using regression analyses. SLI-children performed significantly worse on both TT and WPPSI (\(p \le .0001\)). The TT alone yielded an overall classification rate of 79%, the TT and the WPPSI together yielded an overall classification rate of 80%. TT performance was significantly predicted by verbal intelligence in SLI-children and nonverbal intelligence in controls whilst WPPSI subtest arithmetic was predictive in both groups. Without further research, the Token Test cannot be seen as a valid and sufficient tool for the screening of SLI in preschool children but rather as a tool for the assessment of more general intellectual capacities. SLI-children at this age already show impairments typically associated with SLI which indicates the necessity of early developmental support or training. Token Test performance is possibly an indicator for a more general developmental factor rather than an exclusive indicator for language difficulties.     

Children with Comorbid Speech Sound Disorder and Specific Language Impairment are at Increased Risk for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

This study focuses on the comorbidity between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and speech sound disorder (SSD). SSD is a developmental disorder characterized by speech production errors that impact intelligibility. Previous research addressing this comorbidity has typically used heterogeneous groups of speech-language disordered children. This study employed more precise speech-language diagnostic criteria and examined ADHD symptomatology in 108 SSD children between the ages of 4 and 7 years old with specific language impairment (SLI) (n = 23, 14 males, 9 females) and without SLI (n = 85, 49 males, 36 females). We also examined whether a subcategory of SSD, persistent (n = 39, 25 males, 14 females) versus normalized SSD (n = 67, 38 males, 29 females), was associated with ADHD and/or interacted with SLI to predict ADHD symptomatology. Results indicated that participants in the SSD + SLI group had higher rates of inattentive ADHD symptoms than those in the SSD-only and control groups. In addition, an unexpected interaction emerged such that children with SLI and normalized-SSD had significantly higher ADHD inattentive ratings than the other subgroups. A proposed explanation for this interaction is discussed.